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BioNTech plans modular vaccine factories in Africa

Published:Thursday | February 17, 2022 | 12:07 AM
From left: Ugur Sahin, BioNTech founder; his wife Ozlem Tureci, co-founder and chief medical officer of BioNTech; Louise Mushikiwabo, politician of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and Secretary General of the Organization of La Francophonie; Senait Fisseha of
AP
From left: Ugur Sahin, BioNTech founder; his wife Ozlem Tureci, co-founder and chief medical officer of BioNTech; Louise Mushikiwabo, politician of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and Secretary General of the Organization of La Francophonie; Senait Fisseha of the Susan Buffet Foundation; and Holm Keller, executive chairman of the kENUP Foundation, stand together during the presentation of manufacturing facilities in Marburg, Germany, yesterday.

BERLIN (AP):

German vaccine maker BioNTech, which developed the first widely approved shot against COVID-19 together with Pfizer, unveiled plans Wednesday to establish manufacturing facilities in Africa that would boost the availability of much-needed medicines on the continent.

The modular design presented at a ceremony in Marburg, Germany, consists of shipping containers fitted with the equipment necessary to make the company’s mRNA-based vaccine, save for the final step of putting doses into bottles, a process known as fill and finish.

“Our goal is to enable mRNA production on all continents,” BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told AP.

BioNTech has been criticised by some campaign groups for refusing to suspend its vaccine patents and let rivals manufacture the shots as part of an effort to make them more widely available, especially in poor countries. The company argues that the process of making mRNA vaccines is difficult and it prefers to work with local partners to ensure consistent quality of the shots worldwide.

“Even collaborating with world-class companies, it takes three to four months just to ensure that the fill and finish (know-how) is transferred,” Sahin said. “And we have, of course, a limited capacity to do the full technology transfer.”

The first turnkey facility will be shipped to either Senegal or Rwanda in the second half of this year, BioNTech said. It aims to start production of up to 50 million doses of vaccine a year within 12 months, pending approval from local regulators.

That’s a fraction of the 1.2 billion doses the company produced in Marburg last year. But the vaccines made in the target country would likely be for use there and other African Union states at a not-for-profit price, BioNTech said.